Suffice to say, Fiorucci embodied the collective madness of the 70s, like a spinning disco ball, reflecting a mirage of alternative universes and a sea of glittering faces, to every corner of the room, in the deepest of the night.

Fiorucci did not spend money on advertising with magazines since its founder, Elio Fiorruci and the photographer Oliviero Toscani (who later created Benetton ads), had an anti-mass media attitude. Instead, Fiorucci plastered its name and the logo of two winged cherubs on T-shirts, key chains, shopping bags and promotional posters and postcards that portrayed playful and controversial images.

All garments and accessories were characterised by a cute logo: designed together with Italo Lupi, it featured two little sweet cherubs, one with blond locks, the other with dark hair, both with puffy rosy cheeks, the little angels were at times portrayed on shirts, dresses and swimwear wearing cool sunglasses.

In 1984, Panini (serial sticker album publisher known for World Cup and Star Wars stickers) created an album in which 200 of Fiorucci’s best and craziest posters were turned into collectible stickers. Around 100 stickers were designed by Fiorucci store’s Creative Director, Terry Jones, who went on to found the i-D magazine. At the time, the Fiorucci sticker album was a runaway commercial success. Now, it is a highly coveted graphic design masterpiece.Any ambitious designers, fretful about taking time off this summer should consider the career of Elio Fiorucci. The fashion designer, who passed away aged 80 at his home in Milan, found his key inspiration not at the drawing board, but on the beach.

One of Fiorucci's luckiest intuitions - inspired by the cultural revolution that Mary Quant had launched in the UK - was adding Lycra to denim and creating stretch trousers that would flatter women's bodies. During a trip to the Spanish Mediterranean party island of Ibiza, Fiorucci noticed how wet jeans clung to women’s bodies, and sought to replicate the look back on dry land. His innovations would change Western casualwear forever, as would his preference for equally skinny clientele.The label’s skintight Buffalo ’70 jeans, worn [above] by Manhattan modeling queen Donna Jordan, were popular with New York’s clubbing crowd. Jackie Kennedy, Dianna Ross and Bianca Jagger were all fans.

Brooke Shields stuck out her tongue at the photographers at this Blondie party held at Fiorucci in Beverly Hills.

Elio Fiorucci is credited with coming up with the concept of designer denim, a theme taken up by Gloria Vanderbilt, Calvin Klein and virtually every label-aware designer since.

Fiorucci refused to design for women above a size 10, claiming his clothes suited these smaller sizes better. Fiorruci also set out to make fashion fun, creating glittery Plexiglas jewelry and strawberry-scented carrier bags. His cheeky graphics included Vargas-style pin-ups and cherubs wearing sunglasses.

Fiorucci's clothes were not advertised on fashion magazines since Elio and the photographer Oliviero Toscani, had a sort of anti-fashion and anti-bourgeois ethics and preferred coming up with controversial posters that portrayed playful images of semi-naked models that were deemed by many people as too transgressive, but were never vulgar and that consumers loved to collect.

After Elio passed away in July this year, fashion historians and vintage fans outpoured their love for the fashion illuminary, for what Fiorucci meant to a bygone era, a lost generation, and a younger and wilder world:Fiorucci’s fun, flashy, irreverent designs collaged pop culture iconography and cribbed from various decades, combining 40s glamour, 50s kitsch and 60s youthquake with keenly sourced inspirations from around the ever-shrinking globe.

Thank you, Mr. Fiorucci (1935-2015)

Candice Swanepoel was shot recently by Terry Richardson for Vogue Japan’s June 2012 issue with a sexy 80s inspired wardrobe from throwback Italian womens brand Fiorucci, with some of the images directly referencing specific Fiorucci ad and images.